Doubleyourfreelancing.com, ugurus.com, and many others are in the business of se...

This comment was posted to reddit on Apr 02, 2015 at 10:05 pm and was deleted within 16 hour(s) and 57 minutes.

Doubleyourfreelancing.com, ugurus.com, and many others are in the business of selling freelancers information about how to make more money. I'd like to know your opinion on these services.

I had next to zero experience when I started, honestly.

I learned to code because I was in a touring band and we couldn't afford to hire someone to customize our MySpace page. After I learned that, I decided to try and build a website for us. I rebuilt that site at least a dozen times and tried new techniques each time.

Then I built a site for a friend. His parents asked me to build a site for their business. I did both for free.

Then a stranger approached me about a site and asked how much I charged.

All of this happened while I was reading everything I could get my hands on about code, and I started working on a CMS to use with clients (I later abandoned this for WordPress to avoid vendor lock-in for my clients).

I wrote a post about building a simple CMS, then a few posts about things like object-oriented programming and best practices, and suddenly I was a writer. I got the book deal based on my previous articles, and two more book deals based on my first book.

I also started going to the only code meetup in Montana: MT Programmers. I learned a lot, and then I started volunteering to present.

Nothing forces you to know your shit like teaching it to other people.

All of this led to me building an online reputation, and I started to get approached by bigger clients because of it. I landed a role solving dev problems for a few ad agencies, which was great money and cool projects (but stressful), and my existing client work had built a steady referral stream.

I can't say for sure what exactly led to my success, but I think the key components were:

I love learning, so I challenged myself to learn new things whenever I could by building small personal projects.

I would promise things to clients that I wasn't able to build... yet. Then I'd make damn sure I delivered. (I always do best when I set myself on fire.)

I shared as much as I could by writing tutorials and attending local meetups. By teaching, I had to ensure I really understood what I was talking about, which made me a much better programmer.

I hope any of this helps. Good luck!

TL;DR
Found something I liked doing, then talked about it incessantly in public until people assumed I was an expert (which eventually made me an expert).